“Oh, I reckon we’ll find out somehow,” Mary replied kindly. “I think those Owls know a lot more than even our so-called Teachers do, let alone all your Scientists and such like!”
“Well, whatever those Owls are on about, if we don’t watch out, our ‘higher calling’s’ going to be at least a month’s worth of detentions!” he continued, with a shrug and a sigh.
Mary just smiled at him and then did a joyful pirouette, twirling about with her arms flung out wide, and yelling out at the top of her voice, “Oh, but isn’t it all simply wonderful, Roger, eh? A whole New Wood for us to explore. It’s just like we really are explorers now, isn’t it? And all of this is ours – a totally new and unknown woodland-world, just for us!”
“Yes,” muttered Roger, unenthusiastically, “but just why is it called the ‘Bad Wood’ then, Mary, eh? That’s what I’d like to know, you know. Things aren’t just called a bad name for no good reason, now are they?”
Mary abruptly stopped her dance, and with hands on hips, gave him her most penetrating and serious look yet; she gazed deeply into his eyes; almost directly into his soul, he felt.
“Aren’t they?” was all she said.
CHAPTER 7:
THE SMOKING TREE
The sun was sitting redly above the wide canopy of trees and was steadily sinking lower.
Roger guessed that they had no more than a couple of hours or so of daylight left.
More and more clouds had gathered as well, and the scene, unfolding to Roger and Mary, across the ‘unknown’ Bad Wood, had a far sadder and sombre aspect than the Good Wood they’d left behind had done.
Roger observed that here, the Bad Wood seemed to be full of much older, shaggier trees. He could see between the trees the ground was blanketed with wild thickets of bramble and bush, spilling and sprawling, wherever they could manage to survive.
There were also many fang-like, rocky outcrops, haphazardly scattered throughout the woods and rising-up like broken teeth from the riotous greenery.
As he keenly gazed, scanning from left to right, over the distant tree-tops, like some lofty, ancient Lighthouse set high above the Sea of Trees, he could feel how very ancient the Bad Wood really was. But despite his lack of overt enthusiasm for knightly deeds of derring-do, he did feel a strange compulsion to explore this new and mysterious woodland and especially to be the first to discover its many secret entomological wonders.
To Mary, the Wood had the silent and slumbering air of having a lot of well-kept secrets. Most of them long forgotten. But some secrets were light ones, but some very dark ones too!
Although Roger didn’t seem to show much interest in the pastoral and floral wonders of the arboreal panorama set out before him, Mary on the other hand was totally enthralled and was eagerly champing at the bit to get down the hillside and discover all the wonderful plants and flowers she felt sure must be hidden within its dense flanks.
“Look, Roger, the North face of Hooter’s Hill is a lot steeper on this side than on the south side we flew up with the Owls. I think we’ll have some trouble getting down it, don’t you?”
But Roger was still recovering from his head-dizzying flight with the owls. He reluctantly looked down the hillside to where she was pointing but was still torn between coming up with a good excuse for persuading Mary to return to the River Quaggy with him or instead, just to throw caution to the wind and actually try and go onwards and explore some more.
Then Mary suddenly cried out, “Look, look over there, there’s the top of a big tree, Roger. It looks like a bit like a Wych Elm to me, and look… it’s smoking, it seems to be on fire!”
“What, where?” asked Roger, his interest piqued and so now keenly peering out towards where Mary was excitedly pointing.
“There, there!” she said, jumping up and down and pointing directly North. “See, there’s a sort of a clearing, way over in the middle of the Wood there, you can just about make it out from up here, it’s sitting there all by itself, and it’s got some grey smoke billowing out of it. Can you see it, Roger?”
“Yes, I see it! How very strange. Wonder what’s causing that then?” Roger answered her, getting more enthused, his natural scientific curiosity finally being aroused.
“And remember what Athene said to us, Roj? ‘Look for the sign, and you’ll know it when you see it!’ Remember? Well, we’ve seen it! That must be the sign, I just know it is!”
“Hmmm,” mused Roger, rubbing at his chin and squinting his eyes, looking every inch the intrepid, young scientist. “It’s very curious indeed, for sure. It must be a very big tree, though. Bigger than the trees around it anyway. How far away do you think it is, Mary?”
“Oh, that’s really hard to say, Roj. Distances with Old Mother Nature can be quite tricky at times, ‘specially like this, when you’re looking from high up, like we are.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” he replied in a ponderous tone, “it must be something to do with the perspective and the parallax, I expect.”
“Oh no, not really,” said Mary brightly, “I think it’s just Mother Nature being playful, more like.”
“Harrumph!” Roger grunted, barely containing his disdain for her lack of scientific rigor.
“Anyway, it’s not too far off, is it, so let’s go an’ look see, shall we? Let’s go an’ find out. We’re explorers after all, aren’t we? And, well, I think this could be our destiny, Roj!”
“What! You must be joking!” Roger gasped. “We can’t just go traipsing off miles through the Bad Wood now can we, for Furry Freud’s sake? N-n-not with there being no one knowing we’re even here! And besides, what if there really are ‘b-b-bad things’ out there, what do we do then, eh, what sort of a destiny is that?”
Now it was Mary’s turn to conceal her disdain, but she didn’t grunt, gripe or even groan, she was much cleverer than that. She just put her hand on his shoulder and with her steady, blue-eyed gaze, told him, “Oh no, don’t worry, Roger, I’m not at all scared. I’ll be quite safe. I have you as my bold Knight to protect me, after all, now don’t I?”
“By Newton’s Nose, this girl is tricksy!” Roger thought. “I can’t back down now!”
Roger studied the terrain below them more closely, looking for a way down. He could see that the hillside here definitely was steeper on this side, just as Mary had observed. “Maybe, there was no real way down anyway,” he thought, “maybe, they would just have to turn back, and it wouldn’t be his or anyone’s decision or fault then.” Roger quickly and guiltily tried to suppress such thoughts and turned towards Mary with a shrug.
“Well, I’m game if you are…” he said nonchalantly, “if we can actually find a way down there that is. We may well be forced to come back and try it another day, you know.”
“Oh, there must be a way, surely?” Mary pouted. “I’m sure that Smoking Tree is there for a reason, we can’t just give up, Roj! We should at least investigate that, I think. Don’t you?”
Roger could see that Mary was determined for them to go on, but he couldn’t see how they possibly could, not safely at least. Then he saw that below them, beneath a large line of rocky outcrops and just above the treeline, the woods there were of a different sort of tree entirely. The bottom of Hooter’s Hill on its Northern flanks was covered in a steep sweep of fir trees. Some sort of dark, evergreen pine forest, and then beyond those, the deciduous forest proper, stretched away towards the Smoking Tree and beyond.